Sometimes called “The Omnivore.” Sometimes not. This was where the editors culled and curated minutia, predictions, and resources from the corners of the sporting world.

The Modern Spectator is back with daily, or near daily updates, musings, and jokes about the World Cup in South Africa — and of course a predictions game. We’re using ESPN.com this year. It’s easy to do, just click here (If you don’t have an ESPN account, you have to register but it’s painless), click the teams you think will win. ESPn provides their FIFA ranking to give you some indication who is favored. To join “The Modern Spectator” group, the passwor is “tms”. Invite your friends, but do it soon. Games begin early Friday morning. And…

Watching the Olympic snowboard half-pipe the other day, I was struck dumb. Not by the ridiculousness of the sport – although it does bring out the fuddy-duddy in me – but by the U.S. uniforms. They are, on top, fake flannel and on the bottom, fake denim. The “jeans” have phony fading and phony rips. The whole thing is made of Gore-Tex (which I like to think of as a long lost election result, not as a magical fabric) and was created by Burton so ski bums could imitate urban hipsters imitating cowboys. It’s not surprising really.…

We normally don’t like the Redskins much, and seeing them lose to the monumentally pathetic Lions should have given us at least a tiny bit of pleasure. But we can’t rejoice in a rival’s misery, it turns out. We can only compliment the Lions vaguely and move on to more important questions: Will Jim Zorn, the Skins coach, be fired? And while we’re on the subject, do you think Jim Zorn is related to avant-garde composer John Zorn? How many Zorns does it take to…? Revisit the Gurus picks here. Tweet Jim Zorn is lame mostly because…

We at The Modern Spectator aren’t really ready for football. We know that football, when it comes around, will be so damn overwhelming that we want to resist as long as possible. But it’s so hard! Everywhere we turn someone’s mentioning the Wildcat offense or the Michael Vick offense. Combing through our inbox the other day we noticed, among the press releases for the Rubik’s Cube National Champs and a “world-renowned card stacker,” a promo for a new wagon (pictured), specifically made for football tailgating. It includes, “a heavy duty umbrella, mp3/Ipod speakers, hooks for garbage bags/totes……

Dear Readers, We apologize for the moribund state of The Modern Spectator for the past month. We’ve been traipsing about the world hanging out with oversized Disney-like caricatures of Lionel Messi (left, in front of the Coliseum). Now that we’ve returned to HQ in the picturesque Gowanus section of Brooklyn (soon to be a Superfund site — no joke) we’re trying to freshen up the site with brilliant and hilarious commentary on the world of games. But we’re a bit rusty. So we’ve dipped into the spam box and combed through scores of press releases to discover…

BCS Battle of the Bands III: Thriller Each year when the BCS National Championship game rolls around, we at The Modern Spectator like to turn some of our attention away from the game-plan and onto the sousaphone. We love a sousaphone, and we love the strangely persistent tradition of college marching bands. This year’s match-up pits the Florida Gators band against the Pride of Oklahoma. We’ve discussed the Gators before when they faced Ohio State, and the Sooners have a lot in common with the Buckeyes. They have classic militaristic uniforms with poofy hats, and a solid red…

An enormous new water park opened in Hungary with water slides, a wave pool, and of course a replica Angkor temple. There was ceremonial sychnronized swimming to kick things off. You know we love synchronized swimming. Tweet

During stage 15 of the tour de France, the riders were going into a routine roundabout in a flat area. The television showed the amazing scene that it has showed so many times before: an aerial shot of the peloton splitting like a colony of cells and flowing quickly in both directions around the circle. Then someone on the left side fell, creating a pile up. Remarkably, one instant later someone else on the right side of the circle also fell. Both sides of the roundabout were piled with riders from two unrelated simultaneous crashes. A few…

Last night Justin Morneau won the 2008 home run derby, despite Josh Hamilton’s amazing 28 dingers in the first inning. It made us reminisce about the 1959 TV show Home Run Derby that we used to watch on ESPN classic. The show would pit two sluggers against one another. Each competitor was forced to sit in the booth and smile while the other was hitting. We decided to dig into YouTube and post videos of Home Run Derby featuring the two players who appeared on more All Star rosters than any others, Hank Aaron (21 seasons!) and…

We can’t decide if this joke by David Sipress, one of our favorite New Yorker cartoonists, is funny or just boringly true, but we couldn’t resist posting it. Sipress is always harping on the anxiety of fandom like in his “Rooting for them is a disease” cartoon, his “Daddy doesn’t hate the Yankees — Daddy has issues with the Yankees” gag, his sports transference cartoon, his Red Sox apocalyptic joke, and more. While we’re at it, check out a classic Harry Bliss hockey cartoon, a Danny Shanahan baseball drawing, a Bob Mankoff, and a Michael Crawford. And…